marshal

Latin, marescal.

The marshal was an honourable officer in the royal household, or in the
households of the higher nobility. Like most household offices, that of
marshal ultimately derives from the Carolingian court; their recorded
history in England goes back no further than Domesday Book, though the
office itself was almost certainly older than that. The marshal,
normally a deputy of the constablein military matters, may derive from the same source, the royal 'horse-thegns' first recorded in the reign of Alfred the Great.

Domesday Book records one Anglo-Saxon marshal, Alfred (CON 5,1,3), and
three Normans with that title: Geoffrey in Hampshire and Wiltshire,
Gilbert in Oxfordshire, and Robert in Wiltshire. None of these were
wealthy landowners; but Ansketel of Rots, one of the 100 wealthiest men
in the kingdom, was identified as a marshal in one of the Domesday satellitetexts, the Excerptaof St Augustine's, Canterbury.

For further detail, see J.H. Round, 'The officers of Edward the Confessor', English Historical Review, vol. 19 (1904), pages 90-92; L.M. Larson, The king's Household in England before the Norman Conquest (1904); and David Crouch, The image of aristocracy in Britain, 1000-1300 (1992).